My background is in sales and marketing. I was one of the founding employees of MTV back in the early eighties, and went on to a successful career as an executive with various media and entertainment companies. In 1993 I started my own company in the software industry and sold it to an Israelis company in 2000 which was subsequently sold to BMC Software a few years later. In more recent times, I won the $100,000 Grand Prize in the John Templeton Power of Purpose Essay Contest with my essay Brother John and I had a very well received article published here at Forbes.com called Business Secrets of the Trappists... which has been expanded into my current book, "Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO's Quest for Meaning and Authenticity" (Columbia Business School Publishing, July 2013). My primary focus is as an author, a speaker and marketing consultant helping clients develop non religious marketing strategies for leveraging the emergent trend toward spirituality. You can learn more at www.AugustTurak.com.

How To Become A Visionary Leader (Without Really Trying)

For the first time in history the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens were just played on the same course over consecutive weekends. As a golf fan I would’ve tuned in anyway, but watching the greatest golfers in the world playing Pinehurst #2 was a particularly nostalgic experience.

In 1985 I relocated from New York to Raleigh, N.C., to take a job as vice president of marketing for a software startup. Not long afterwards a flier through the mail offered me and three friends three days at Pinehurst for a great price. While visiting Pinehurst however my golf game became more erratic than usual. So I decided to take a lesson. Ben was a 24- year-old pro at Pinehurst and, like Rick and Louie in the movie Casablanca, my lesson proved to be the beginning of a wonderful relationship.

Pinehurst is only an hour or so from Raleigh, and I was soon spending every weekend in Pinehurst sleeping on Ben’s couch. I played all seven courses at Pinehurst –including Don Ross’ fabled #2 – countless times. And as Ben’s friend, I played for free.

By the judicious addition of some serious partying the summer soon morphed into the movie Caddyshack, but luckily Ben and I were both still young enough to tee off at dawn regardless of what had transpired the night before. (At dawn Pinehurst is at her loveliest as we enjoyed the sheer bliss of getting in 18 holes in 2 ½ hours without ever seeing another golfer.)

For months I lived in golf heaven, but eventually I had to return to earth. Ben took a job at a country club in New York, and I have not laid eyes on him in almost 30 years. But religiously and like clockwork every few years I give him a call just to check in. It took an hour or so of internet digging, but I recently discovered that he is currently the head pro at a country club in Florida. I had to call a few times since he was always “out on the course,” but eventually he called me back.

After 30 minutes of reliving old times, Ben suddenly said,

“Augie, you’re such a visionary!”

Taken off guard I asked him to elaborate.

“Back in 1980,” he said, “you saw cable TV coming and latched on to MTVMTV. Later you realized that software was the ‘NextNext Big Thing,’ and so you moved to Research Triangle Park.”

He went on to say that I had been “smart enough” to realize that the 1990s were going to be the best time in history to become an entrepreneur and proved it by presciently selling both my companies only months before the internet bubble burst. Now, according to Ben, I had become an author and Forbes contributor by expertly riding the internet and the trend toward social media.

Of course I was extremely flattered, but long before he finished his speech I was preparing mine for why he was wrong.

Back in 1981 I was indeed one of MTV’s original employees, but it had nothing to do with clairvoyance. Instead I arrived in New York in 1980 with very little money and fewer prospects. However for years I had kept in touch with the sister of one of my brother’s friends. She was working in New York, and she introduced me to the company that would soon launch MTV. I can honestly say that when I got to New York I didn’t even know what cable TV was.

My transition to software was even more bizarre. My friend in New York attended the University of North Carolina. One of his fraternity brothers happened to be in New York raising money for his software startup back in North Carolina. We all met for a few beers, and by the end of the night he had offered me a job. When I arrived in North Carolina I was not considered a visionary. Instead I was greeted by colleagues who, quite naturally, were a bit apprehensive about a new vice president of marketing who was apparently “some guy the CEO met in a bar.”

I later became an entrepreneur not because I saw the boom years of the 1990s coming but purely by accident. Two of my former students from the University of North Carolina started a software company. I started a company to resell their product, and we owe our eventual success far more to luck and perseverance than to my visionary perspicacity. And while we did indeed sell our companies a few months before the internet bubble burst it too was purely an accident: I had become friends with the CEO of a company from Israel and one day he utterly surprised me with an offer to buy us out at a price that was impossible to refuse.

Finally, my writing career has had nothing to do with the internet or any other “trend.” Instead back in 2004 another former student suggested I submit an essay to the John Templeton Foundation’s Power of Purpose Essay Contest. And I can trace my entire writing career to unexpectedly winning the grand prize with my essay, Brother John.

I am not a visionary. Instead, the critical thread that runs through every wonderful thing that has ever happened to me is other people. The key to my success is that I actually enjoy investing in friends like Ben over long periods of time without ever wondering when, if, or how these friendships will “pay off” to my material benefit.

It was a friend who turned me on to MTV; a friend who introduced me to the technology business; a friend and former student that turned me into an entrepreneur; a friend who bought my company; and two friends and former students who midwifed my transformation into a writer.

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